20 Things Adults Need to Know About Dyslexia

What you will take from this episode

Dyslexia can affect energy, confidence, communication and day-to-day life, not only reading and spelling.
Many adults think quickly in pictures, which can make it hard to translate a clear internal idea into words.
Dyslexia shows up differently from person to person, so one familiar trait does not tell the whole story.
Awareness is a practical starting point: notice your patterns, reduce unnecessary friction and find people who understand.

It is not just a reading and writing thing

For years, I thought leaving school would solve most of my dyslexia problems. I could use a spellchecker, avoid the things I disliked and get on with life. Simple, right? Not quite.

What took me longer to understand is that dyslexia can be a lifestyle challenge. Reading and spelling may be the obvious bits, but the knock-on effects can show up in how tiring detail feels, how easily you explain an idea, how you organise yourself and how much pressure you put on yourself to keep up.

If you have spent years thinking, “I should be able to do this by now,” it may help to look beyond the one task that first made dyslexia visible. The useful question is not whether you can force your way through. It is where your brain is having to do far more work than people can see.

I share more of these real-life patterns across the adult dyslexia podcast. Sometimes simply hearing another adult put words around the experience is a relief.

Dyslexia often has a family thread

One of the first things on my list is that dyslexia is often hereditary. If you have been identified as dyslexic, you may look back through your family and notice familiar patterns in a parent or grandparent, even if nobody had a name for it at the time.

That does not mean every person in a family will have the same experience, or that every reading struggle has the same cause. It does mean that a lack of formal diagnosis in previous generations does not automatically mean the trait was not there.

This matters because many adults grew up with labels such as lazy, careless, messy or not trying hard enough. Looking at a family pattern can replace some of that old blame with context. It is not an excuse to stop learning skills. It is a reason to stop treating your brain as though it has failed a test it was never designed for.

Why detail can drain you

I can read much better than I could when I was younger, and I have learned techniques that help. But a long stretch of reading can still leave me properly tired. It is not always about whether I can get through the words. It is about the work my brain is doing to turn them into something it can use.

Loads of detail can have the same effect. Forms, dense instructions, copying information, long emails and tasks with lots of tiny moving parts may take more energy than the finished result suggests. At school, copying from a board to a page was one of the things that caused me headaches and made learning feel painful.

That is worth planning around rather than judging yourself for. Break dense information into chunks. Ask for the big picture first. Use tools that reduce the amount you have to hold in your head. And if a task is going to take a lot of reading energy, do not schedule it as if it is effortless.

The conversation about adult dyslexia at work goes deeper into why the workplace impact is often much wider than spelling mistakes or written reports.

Visual thinking can be fast, messy and useful

A big part of my own experience is thinking in pictures rather than neat strings of words. An idea can arrive fully formed, with movement, feeling and a sense of where it could go. Then comes the slightly frustrating part: getting it out of my head in a way another person can follow.

You may know that feeling. Your mind has raced ahead, but your mouth is still trying to find the first sentence. Writing can be much the same. It can look as though you do not know what you mean, when actually you know it very clearly, just not in the format the situation demands.

That different perspective can also support creativity and problem-solving. I have found that dyslexic people can spot gaps, connections or alternative routes that are less obvious to others. It does not mean every dyslexic person is creative in the same way, and it certainly does not make the challenges disappear. It is simply a capability that is worth noticing instead of burying under self-criticism.

One practical move is to let the idea come out visually first. Try a rough sketch, voice note, mind map or a conversation before asking yourself to produce the polished version. You are not cheating the process. You are starting in a language your brain may already speak.

A colourful visual map representing dyslexic picture thinking and problem-solving.

Different days, contradictions and possible ADHD

Some days I can have huge energy for ideas and action. Other days are more Netflix-and-ice-cream-in-bed territory. That swing does not make you a fraud. It can be a sign that your energy, attention and mental load need more honest attention than a standard productivity system allows.

I also think many of us are full of contradictions. We can argue fiercely for something in one moment and then catch ourselves doing the opposite later. I laugh at it because I see it in myself. Living close to the moment, chasing what is vivid and dealing with a fast-moving internal world can make consistency harder.

Dyslexia can also sit alongside ADHD or other neurodivergent experiences. I found exploring ADHD a real eye-opener for my own life. That is not a diagnosis for you, and no podcast list can provide one. But if attention, impulsivity, restlessness or major fluctuations in focus feel familiar, it may be worth discussing your experience with an appropriately qualified professional.

If you are trying to make sense of familiar patterns, the free adult dyslexia quiz can be a useful educational starting point. It may help you identify the questions you want to explore next.

Awareness changes the way you work with yourself

Low self-esteem is one of the hardest patterns I see around adult dyslexia. When words jumble, tasks take longer or your output looks inconsistent, it is easy to turn a difference in processing into a story that you are not capable. I did that for years.

I tried to operate as if my brain worked exactly like everyone else’s, provided I used enough willpower. It was exhausting. It felt a bit like putting diesel into a petrol engine and then wondering why the whole thing was running badly. I could keep going, but anxiety and effort were doing far too much of the work.

The point of learning about dyslexia is not to put yourself in a box or decide you cannot do things. It is to understand your own patterns well enough to choose better supports, better environments and more realistic ways of getting an idea into the world.

There is no single dyslexic profile. One person may struggle most with spelling, another with reading fatigue, copying, organisation, confidence or getting thoughts out verbally. Start with what is true for you. That is more useful than trying to match somebody else’s checklist.

For a wider, personal look at these overlapping experiences, you can explore my book, Dyslexia and ADHD Explained From the Inside.

And if someone close to you is trying to understand dyslexia too, 20 Things to Remember if You Love Someone With Dyslexia is a practical resource you can share.

A mixed group of adults connecting through shared understanding of dyslexia.

Start with one honest observation

Of all the 20 things adults need to know about dyslexia, awareness is the one I keep coming back to. You cannot solve your way out of having a differently wired brain, but you can get much better at understanding how it affects your life.

This week, notice one place where you are using effort and anxiety to compensate for a mismatch. Could you make the information more visual, ask for a different format, take a break earlier or explain what you need to someone you trust? Small adjustments can matter.

Read the full episode transcript

Hey everybody, welcome to The Truth About Dyslexia. In today's podcast, I'm going to redo one of my most popular podcasts over the years, the 20 things you need to know if you've got dyslexia. Now, I've tweaked these a little bit, but majority are very similar. So if you have listened to this again, this is a great refresher, and maybe a little bit more detail in places as I've learned more over the years. So let's get into it. Okay, number one, dyslexia is hereditary.

It isn't something that magically happens. You don't get vaccinated and become dyslexic. It is something that passes down through families. Now, some people say it does potentially skip a generation. I'm yet to see it skip a generation. Potentially it gets worse or less, but overall it is hereditary.

So if you've been diagnosed with it, very likely one of your parents may have it or a grandparent. You'll be able to see it up your lines. Just because they haven't been diagnosed as well does not mean they don't have it. Number two, dyslexia is a lifestyle challenge. It's so much more than just reading, writing, and potentially numbers if you've got dyscalculia. You know, it affects many aspects of your life, and so it's really important to remember that it's not just a reading-writing thing.

You fix that, there are going to be a lot of other side effects that will appear. So don't just write it off like I did when I was young and just thought, hey, I'm out of school, I can use a spell checker, the world will be okay. There's a lot more to learn, which you may have learned from listening to this podcast. Three, you may seem weird. You know, sometimes dyslexics can see things very differently. So, you know, when we do see things differently, it can appear weird to the outside world.

Our brains don't work in always a logical way. It doesn't always go step by step. It goes all around the place. So things that can seem crazy at the time and only seem like a smart idea later on once it's done, that's potentially a dyslexic trait. Four, you know, we find details exhausting. Our brains really struggle with heaps and heaps of detail.

I find this especially when I'm reading. My brain, I can read okay. I've learned over the years, I've used different techniques to help me read better, but it doesn't stop my brain getting tired if I have to read a lot, because my brain has to do so much more work in reading, converting it into the way my mind processes information, and then actually doing something with that information. So just be very aware that if you are going to be reading a lot of stuff, it is going to get a bit tiring. So it's important. Number five, you know, we function differently on different days.

You know, what I see a lot in the dyslexic world is we'll have fantastically up days, and then we'll have Netflix and ice cream days in bed where we just don't want to do anything. You know, this is a common one with ADHD as well, where, you know, you have different spikes in the way you operate. Number six, you know, we are highly creative. You know, you find with dyslexics, we are problem solvers. We find different ways of doing things that others haven't done it. People like Richard Branson and the like are fantastic at this.

They see a problem, they don't get stuck with how it's being done, and they're able to connect the dots to see what others don't. Number seven, you know, and again, this brings us on to seeing things that others don't. You know, not only are we creative, we can see these gaps. You know, we see, you know, it's not just about letters flipping on a page, it's how the brain actually processes the information. You know, our minds see things in a 3D way, which is really powerful. Number eight, you know, we're more likely to have ADD or ADHD.

They say 40% of people with dyslexia also have ADD. I potentially wonder if it's higher, but, you know, it's a very moving thing. But it's very important to realize that if you have dyslexia, and where a lot of my listeners get to is they've got potentially undiagnosed ADHD, maybe autism, maybe something else. So it is important to get those checked out because it can be a real eye-opener, was for me. Number nine, you know, we can experience our thoughts as reality. You know, we're very good at going off into dream worlds and creating these amazing places, these things that seem so lifelike.

We can move around in them. They're really experiential, and we have feelings that associate with them. So those feelings are actually connected to what we're seeing in our mind or what we're doing in our mind, and that has a lot of challenges, a lot of pros and cons. And I've got a bunch of other podcasts that talk through those pros and cons. Number ten, they, you know, dyslexics may not know they have dyslexia. Now, this is the big thing.

You know, people kind of say, Oh, we expect this many people in the population to have dyslexia. There's been heaps of different studies, and the variety of different results is quite remarkable. I've seen everything from five to twenty percent. Yale came out with twenty percent many years ago. Ten seems to be where everyone settles in the grand scheme of things, but the accuracy is very broad. It's really how you process things in your mind.

So it's, yeah, I'm not 100% sure on the exact percentage, but my personal way I sit is I think it's somewhere between ten and twenty percent, and people have different levels of challenge from it. Eleven, we think in pictures, not words. You know, we're really fast thinkers. The visual brain processes information at six times that of the symbolic brain. So if you, you know, everyone will process some information both ways, but if your brain leverages the visual mindset heavily, your brain is going to go really quickly. It's why we can think up ideas super fast, but we may struggle to say them out loud.

It can be a real painful thing. Got all this stuff in your head, you just can't get out, be it in writing or verbally, and it can take a bit of work to get there. You can get there, like, but again, you'll probably even hear when I do my podcasts, I say um a lot. It's because my brain is so much further past what I'm saying. Does that make sense? Number 12.

You know, you'll always have dyslexia. I used to think that I would grow out of it when I left school. I think I've mentioned that in a few podcasts. You know, I kind of forgot about it from about 18 to 30. I kind of just said, I'm normal. I can do anything.

My brain operates the same as everyone else's if I just work hard enough. And that was a real painful experience because my brain doesn't operate the same way. Why was I putting diesel into a petrol engine kind of thing? You know, theoretically, in that case, it wouldn't have run at all. But somehow I managed to get it to run, but it didn't run as well as it could have. And it was done a lot more on willpower and anxiety.

13. You know, again, this is we use our brains differently. You know, our brains underutilize the left hemisphere, which handles the reading, and we overuse the visual centers. So your brain's actually operating differently. It's not a bad thing. It's just an actual, you know, evolutionary piece.

You know, some people do it this way so we can actually lead people forward in the world. We can see things they can't. You need leaders with dyslexia because that's the way it runs. If dyslexia hadn't been discovered based on the reading and writing, it might have been hailed as something very differently, and I think in many years gone by, it probably was. You know, we were seen as visionaries, the people who could see the path before it existed. You know, it was only when reading, a late invention, was created that, you know, dyslexia got a name like that because it's not one of the pros.

14. You know, we often have low self-esteem. This is really, really common, and I see this all the time. Many of us with dyslexia have very low self-esteem. We seem to think that we get our words jumbled up. We can't do things the same way.

Our brains are running off all over the place. We don't think we can be consistent, or it takes a lot more work for us to be consistent, and so we have low self-esteem. Heaps of ways to work with that. I've done other podcasts on it. I'm really a pro fan of hypnosis at the moment around that, and there's a heap of different things that can be done. Now, number 15.

Dyslexia does show up in different ways. No two dyslexics have all the same symptoms. The thing to think about is we are all unique. Just because you're dyslexic doesn't mean that you're going to be exactly the same as the next person. For example, with my dyslexia, what I struggle with, one of the challenges or the comorbidities is that I really struggled at school to copy from the page. You know, so when I was reading the board, I was trying to copy onto the page, I would struggle.

And so I'd get a headache, and it was painful, and I'd hate it. It was just absolutely draining. And that was one of the biggest reasons I even got flagged as having a challenge. That was my big thing. But that might not be your challenge. Maybe yours is the B's and the D's flip around more.

It could be a heap of different things. What actually tells you you're dyslexic is not always the end point. That may be the way it shows up in the real world, but our brains will be operating in a similar way. They're working with the visual cortex, the visual kind of centers, rather than the symbolic ones, the left hemisphere. Now, number 16. They're full of contradictions.

So this is my favorite, actually. A lot of dyslexics are complete hypocrites. You know, we're full of contradictions because we live very much moment to moment. And we see this on what I call the bell curve, where we can say one thing and do the opposite. You may find a dyslexic, like, fight for something wholeheartedly when they're speaking, and then you watch them and they do exactly the thing they've fought against. It's really funny.

I do laugh at it. I do laugh at it a bit. 18. Many of us are highly intuitive. We're really intuitive people. You know, we feel things because our minds are so fast and they're running so quickly.

Emotions get produced from the visual mind, and these experiences we're having just Really happens, and that's when we get an intuition. We don't know where the intuitions come from, but it's usually our brain operating at full pace. Nineteen, they often find success. You know, many of the world's top entrepreneurs, you know, we're talking the Steve Jobs, the Richard Bransons, the Steven Spielbergs. Just name, there's so many of us out there have created success from being dyslexic because it's the way we think. So it's not a negative.

You've just got to find a different path than may be in front of you. That's the big thing to know. And number 20, and I'm sure, and I'll be honest, there's some that aren't in here. There are so many things about dyslexia, but number 20 is awareness is key. You know, the more, you know, you can't solve dyslexia, but being aware of what it means for you, how your brain operates, and knowing that other people out there exist like you, like it's, there's no better thing in the world because you're not alone. You're not doing this in isolation.

And I can't speak highly enough about learning about myself. That's why I started this podcast, so I could share my journey and my learnings through the years, because I think it's so important to empower us to do amazing things. Now, I've got a great interview coming up next week. I've got some good podcasts planned. Stay tuned, everybody. I hope those 20 things updated have given you some good ideas.

Remember, you can always reach out to the podcast, join our Facebook group, and share your experiences, ask questions. It's all about helping empower dyslexics to do more and have an epic rest of your day. Thanks for listening to The Truth About Dyslexia. This podcast is sponsored by Added Nutrition and our new product, Added Sleep. It's designed for brains wired differently. If you want to sleep better, maybe give it a try.

Use the code Truth About Dyslexia to get a $10 credit on your order at addednutrition. com. Link in the show notes.

20 Things Adults Need to Know About Dyslexia